Fifty Sentences
by Sekhem
Summary: Fifty sentences about two characters. The long-awaited bonus chapter. My targets this time are the Gracia and Maes Hughes in Munich, Germany. Some spoilers for CoS. Rated T for references to the war.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: _Fullmetal Alchemist_ and all associated characters and situations are not mine. If I actually were Hiromu Arakawa, I would be a much wealthier woman.

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This was a challenge I couldn't resist. You'd be amazed how difficult it can be to squeeze an entire story into one sentence.

If any of these inspire you to write something of your own, feel free to use them.

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Roy Mustang and Riza Hawkeye

#01 - Comfort

The Hawk's Eye had watched over him all through their time in Ishbal, and he found it oddly reassuring that she had continued to do so for all these years since then.

#02 - Kiss

It was against regulations, but she could have kissed him when he put himself between her and Barry the Chopper.

#03 - Soft

The click of metal against metal as she removed the safety from her gun was barely audible, but still brought the entire office staff, including the dog, to a standstill.

#04 - Pain

All he was aware of through the pain and fever was that she was there, stroking his hair and telling him that she was sorry she hadn't been faster.

#05 - Potatoes

When he asked Havoc about what happened with Catherine Armstrong, the garbled reply about potatoes and tomatoes left him entirely grateful that his own relationship wasn't nearly as complicated.

#06 - Rain

"I wouldn't dream of calling you a wet match, sir," she replied, a saccharine sweet smile on her face, "but you're still useless in the rain."

#07 - Chocolate

He dangled the piece of candy bar in front of Black Hayate's nose for five minutes before she told him that dogs didn't like chocolate.

#08 - Happiness

His distaste for firearms was well-known around the base, but the afternoon he spent with her on the firing range was one of the happiest he'd passed in a long time.

#09 - Telephone

His staff didn't know that when he flirted with girls over the phone, half of them were his contacts on the street, and she was the other half.

#10 - Ears

The men started going crazy trying to find out who the mysterious Elizabeth was that they heard Chief was going to marry, but hadn't realized that the lieutenant used a shortened version of her name.

#11 - Name

Putting one's signature to a piece of paper took less than ten seconds, so she never understood why he put off doing his paperwork the way he did.

#12 - Sensual

Until he saw the tattoo on her bare back, he had no idea that alchemy could be such a delight to the senses.

#13 - Death

When the line went silent, the first thing that went through his mind was the image of Hughes bleeding to death in a phone booth, and he prayed he hadn't lost her too.

#14 - Sex

There were people who thought that his having a member of the fair sex protecting him was insane; they changed their minds when she started shooting at them.

#15 - Touch

She had meant for him to destroy the fire array, and once she'd taken off her shirt, she'd expected him to, but was pleasantly surprised when his hands moved to caress rather than burn.

#16 - Weakness

The battle had taken everything he'd had and then some, but he didn't collapse until the two of them were alone together and she was the only one there to see his weakness.

#17 - Tears

"Honestly, sir, I thought you learned how to do these things in basic training," she said as she neatly mended the tears in his jacket.

#18 - Speed

After Hughes took a picture of the two of them in a potentially compromising position, the only thing that saved him from certain death was that he could run faster than they could and was able to hide the film.

#19 - Wind

"Since when do you know how to knit?" he demanded as he watched her wind the pile of yarn that had once been a partially finished sweater into a ball.

#20 - Freedom

If he'd had the freedom to pursue her, they'd have probably been married and had at least two children by now.

#21 - Life

He had planned to be in the military for the rest of his life, but had never dreamed that she might become a part of that as well.

#22 - Jealousy

Barry saw the relief on her face when the guy in the army uniform showed up, and couldn't help but envy the man who already had his little missy's heart.

#23 - Hands

In his darkest moments, he feared that she would see him for what he truly was - a man with the blood of a nation on his hands.

#24 - Taste

He had a reputation as a womanizer, but she still stood by him; there was no accounting for taste.

#25 - Devotion

Her interest in the army extended only to the aspects of it which affected her and the one she had sworn to protect.

#26 - Forever

When the day came that they did take their vows, they knew that divorce would never be an option.

#27 - Blood

Her father had been his teacher; alchemy was as much in her blood as it was in his.

#28 - Sickness

When he woke up, he was surprised to find out that she had sat with him all through the worst of his fever, though when he asked her a direct question about it, she said that she was simply doing her job as his bodyguard.

#29 - Melody

Music had never featured prominently in their relationship; their song consisted of gunfire, explosions, and the sounds of mayhem.

#30 - Star

He was a rising star in the Amestrian military, but that wasn't the reason why she followed him so closely.

#31 - Home

She had never thought that she would see Eastern Headquarters become a home, or that he would become the head of a family, even if it was for the sake of the two orphaned brothers who had landed in their midst.

#32 - Confusion

She held his hand so that, even though he was delirious, he could, on some level, know that she was there.

#33 - Fear

When the two of them barged into the emergency ward looking for Edward and Alphonse, they were both too worried to notice that the staff thought they were the boys' parents.

#34 - Lightning/Thunder

Thunderstorms had always scared her, but when she watched them with him, they never seemed quite so bad.

#35 - Bonds

Hughes had told him for years that he needed to find a wife; what his friend hadn't realized, though, was that he had already found her.

#36 - Market

She found out he could cook the day they ran into each other at the butcher's shop and he was arguing with the man over the quality of the ground chuck.

#37 - Technology

It was bad enough that Fullmetal called him a glorified lighter with gloves, but, dammit, did she really have to laugh when he said it?

#38 - Gift

Every year on her birthday, a neatly wrapped present and a box of good chocolates would appear on her desk, with an unsigned card and no obvious clue as to the identity of the sender.

#39 - Smile

Her face is burning with the embarrassment of his having simply walked up and kissed her with all the passion that she hadn't known was there, but the goofy smile on her face is a near-match for the one on his.

#40 - Innocence

Sometimes when she'd catch him napping in his office, she'd stop and marvel at just how innocent he looked when he was asleep.

#41 - Completion

Just the thing to make a bad day complete, she thought as the sound of a bawdy drinking song sung in four different keys drifted out of his office.

#42 - Clouds

He couldn't help but smile when he saw her looking out the window rather than focusing on her own paperwork; it wasn't every day he caught her with her head in the clouds.

#43 - Sky

"It always rains when I come to visit Maes," he told her as they walked through the cemetary beneath a clear blue sky.

#44 - Heaven

If this isn't heaven, it's the next best thing, he decided, a blissed-out smile on his face as her fingers massaged away the tension in his shoulders.

#45 - Hell

Three hours later, when the power went out and made his misery complete, he decided that hell was being trapped in an elevator with Hawkeye and Fullmetal.

#46 - Sun

When his eyes opened a few hours after the sun came up on that second day, she ducked into the bathroom and cried with relief that she hadn't failed him after all.

#47 - Moon

He had been over the moon when he'd first heard of the Elric brothers and their genius for alchemy, but hadn't expected to find an unconscious, badly maimed child and a steel golem instead.

#48 - Waves

Fire was beautiful when it washed over everything like water at the beach, and he always saw it most vividly in his nightmares.

#49 - Hair

Aside from the Warehouse 13 incident, the only problem with her bringing Black Hayate to work with her was that the dog's hair got into everything.

#50 - Supernova

With the red stone ring on his hand, his range increased exponentially, and with a snap of his fingers, the air for miles burned with the rage of an exploding star.


	2. Maes and Gracia Hughes

Once again, the characters and situations associated with Fullmetal Alchemist are owned by Hiromu Arakawa. If they were mine, Hughes would have lived.

Maes and Gracia Hughes

#01 - Walking

It felt like they had walked five miles around the park before he finally got up the nerve to ask her out, but he felt like he could fly when she accepeted.

#02 - Waltz

He had never had a desire to learn how to dance, but for her and their first dance together, he was willing to learn.

#03 - Wishes

Her mother was a steady and stablizing influence through her entire life, but Elysia always wished she could have gotten to know her father.

#04 - Wonder

The wonder on his face as she presented him with their new daughter was well worth the hours of labor.

#05 - Worry

She could feel the sheathes he kept strapped to his forearms under his sleeves when she hugged and kissed him goodbye, and she knew it would be a very bad night.

#06 - Whimsy

His sense of whimsy, she soon learned, belied the sneaky bastard that lurked just beneath the surface.

#07 - Waste/Wasteland

As she looked at the human wreckage that had once been her fiance and his best friend, it occurred to her that she could be in for more trouble than she thought.

#08 - Whiskey and rum

When he came to see her that night Roy first came back from the war, he was sporting a black eye and a bruised jaw, and when he kissed her, he tasted of whiskey.

#09 - War

The one thing that kept him going when he was at the Ishbal front was the picture he carried of the girl he was going to come home to.

#10 - Weddings

The bride and groom were making out in a corner every chance they got, the maid of honor was armed to the teeth, and the usher had ducked out of rehearsal for a smoke break five times already; Roy had to wonder if all weddings were like this, or if this one was an exception.

#11 - Birthday

Edward would always associate them with his birthday; he and Al had found in them the closest thing to a stable family they'd had since they left home.

#12 - Blessing

His parents were dead, and hers lived on the other side of the country; they married without anyone's blessing but their own and their friends.

#13 - Bias

He would always think that she and Elysia were the two most beautiful girls in the world, but then, he was and would always be biased.

#14 - Burning

She thought it was amusing that Roy always threatened to torch the photographs of Elysia; after all, he'd taken a fair number of them.

#15 - Breathing

A few days after he proposed, he said something about wanting to still be breathing for their fiftieth anniversary and told her he was going to give up smoking.

#16 - Breaking

As Elysia pleaded with her to know why they were burying her daddy, she could feel her heart breaking all over again.

#17 - Belief

After the war, he'd lost whatever faith he'd had in a supreme being, but when Elysia was born, he liked to think he got some of it back.

#18 - Balloon

If her mother had had her way, the wedding would have gone from a cozy affair with just their friends there to witness, to a full-blown society wedding with all the pomp and circumstanced that went with it..

#19 - Balcony

When he climbed the drainpipe to the balcony of her third-floor apartment so that he could apologize, she wasn't sure whether she was going to kill him or marry him; he was always grateful she chose the latter.

#20 - Bane

"She's as bad as he was," Roy groused when Elysia found her father's old camera and started taking pictures.

#21 - Quiet

As Elysia grew older, when she asked questions about how her father had died, her mother would look sad, and her Uncle Roy would just go quiet, but neither of them would explain.

#22 - Quirks

Sciezska had met him before she came to work for him, but she hadn't realized who he was at the time; one of his lesser-known quirks was a love of old books.

#23 - Question

He pulled a black velvet jewelry box out of his pocket, went down on one knee, and asked the question he'd been working up the nerve to ask all evening: "Will you marry me?"

#24 - Quarrel

She knew that he and Roy had fought over girls in the past, when they were both single, and that they had even fought over her as well, but as charming as the Flame Alchemist was, he was most definitely not her type, and she hadn't hesitated to say so.

#25 - Quitting

He had loved her since they were little; twenty years and half a dozen refusals of marriage had never stopped him from hoping she'd say yes someday.

#26 - Jump

Havoc nearly hit the ceiling as the knife neatly cut his cigarette in half and embedded itself in the wall, and he was informed that there would be no smoking around the baby.

#27 - Jester

He played the clown at work as a way to hide in plain sight; when people assumed he was crazy, they were more likely to talk openly in front of him.

#28 - Jousting

There were times when she thought that Riza had the right idea; when they started bickering, a well-placed shot from a pistol would always stop them both dead in their tracks.

#29 - Jewel

The diamond in the engagement ring shone as brightly as the tears in her eyes as she threw herself into his arms, knocking both of them to the floor, and said yes.

#30 - Just

Years later, Elysia would reflect that if there had been any justice in the world, her parents would have had as long and happy a life together as she and her own husband had.

#31 - Smirk

He would always have a smirk on his face when Roy insisted that he didn't want a wife; he'd found one in Riza, but just didn't know it yet.

#32 - Sorrow

He didn't say two words to her at the funeral, but she knew Roy Mustang shared her grief; she was burying a husband, and he was burying a brother.

#33 - Stupidity

"Do they ever grow up?" Riza asked as they watched him and Roy play keepaway with his camera and Roy's gloves.

#34 - Serenade

She slammed the window closed, thus blocking out his drunken singing from the street outside her apartment building.

#35 - Sarcasm

As often as Roy sneered when his best friend told him to find a wife, there were still times when he was jealous.

#36 - Sordid

The more he learned about the conspiracy, the uglier the world seemed; all that kept him going by the end was the thought of his wife and daughter waiting for him at home.

#37 - Soliloquy

The preacher's sermon could have been a Shakespeare soliloquy for all they could care; they only had eyes for each other.

#38 - Sojourn

"I don't know how I let you talk me into this," she hissed as she and Roy snuck into the hospital after hours to see him.

#39 - Share

If everything had gone well, their second child would have shared a name with his best friend; instead, their son would share a name with the father he would never meet.

#40 - Solitary

She had never thought that she would be on her own again after she married him, and to lose him after only a few short years together was more than she though she could bear.

#41 - Nowhere

One of his rare nightmares about the war woke them both up, and she spent the next hour holding him until he stopped shaking and reassuring him that she wasn't going anywhere.

#42 - Neutral

He was positive the baby would be a girl, and she was sure it was a boy; they ended up painting the nursery in a nice neutral color.

#43 - Nuance

"I'm fine," had many shades of meaning with him; he used the phrase to dismiss everything from paper cuts to stab wounds because he didn't want her to worry.

#44 - Near

Even years after he was dead and buried, there were times she could swear she could hear his laugh, smell his aftershave, or feel his arms around her, and she would know he was still with her.

#45 - Natural

His job required an exacting attention to detail and the ability to remember vast quantities of information; it was no wonder he never forgot her birthday or their anniversary, or to tell her he loved her.

#46 - Horizon

Whole new worlds had opened up for him when he married her, and they opened again when Elysia was born; he just wished the two of them had more time to explore them.

#47 - Valiant

Keeping up with him and Roy required a heroic effort on her part; he was the idea man, Roy was the strategist, and she was the one who provided material support, alibis and bail money.

#48 - Virtuous

He loved his family and friends dearly, and was willing to go to his grave to protect them if he had to; he prayed that would never have to happen.

#49 - Victory

When he grabbed her and kissed her, it pretty much killed the arguement they'd been having; as far as he was concerned, he could chalk it up as a win.

#50 - Defeat

She used the same tactic against him during an arguement a few months later, and when he could think again, he decided he didn't mind losing after all.


	3. Edward Elric and Winry Rockbell

As always, I do not, nor will I ever own anything associated with Fullmetal Alchemist, aside from a few volumes of the manga and the DVDs of the series and movie. If I actually were Hiromu Arakawa, I'd be a much wealthier woman.

I have two more couples I can work with on this project, so if you want me to continue, let me know.

I'm drawing on a combination of the manga and anime here, so bear with me, folks.

Edward Elric and Winry Rockbell

#01 - Air

The first time he came home after he'd joined the army, one of their neighbors made a comment about his height; it was a wonder the air hadn't turned blue from the kind of language he used in retaliation.

#02 - Apples

The tree in their backyard bore fruit every fall, and he would always pick the apples and throw them down to her.

#03 - Beginning

The little girl from next door howled in pain when his son pulled her pigtail, then picked up her toy wrench and started beating him over the head with it; Hohenheim recognized it as the start of a beautiful friendship.

#04 - Bugs

Her very first piece of automail had had so many bugs in its design that he had taken one look at it and laughed, and she couldn't help but join him.

#05 - Coffee

He knew for sure he was home when he heard her puttering around in her workshop and smelled Grandma Pinako's coffee brewing downstairs in the kitchen.

#06 - Dark

Before they'd tried to bring their mother back, he'd always liked the dark, but now, he always kept a candle and a box of matches at his bedside...just in case.

#07 - Despair

When she got word that he had disappeared, her fear for his safety gave way to despair at his death; she locked herself in her room, cried for a week, and scared the hell out of her grandmother.

#08 - Doors

He couldn't blame her for wanting to go to Rush Valley; an apprennticeship there would give her opportunities that she wouldn't have if she stayed in Resembool.

#09 - Drink

Wherever his strange new friend had come from, Alfonse decided, he had definitely left a girl behind; whenever he drank too much, he always ended up crying over her loss.

#10 - Duty

She wondered why and how he had developed the loyalty to his commanding officer, but when she saw the two of them dragging bodies out of a burning building with no regard to their own safety, she started to understand.

#11 - Earth

The arcs of blue lightning and the earthenware hands clutching the two of them as they struggled to get free were for her solid indicators that the two brothers had been fighting again.

#12 - End

She had never known whether she would be there to see the end of their journey, but she was glad that he wasn't alone when it came.

#13 - Fall

As she watched the strange ship fall out of the sky, she prayed that wherever he landed - whether it was this world or the other one - that he would be safe.

#14 - Fire

The fever was burning him from the inside out, leaving him shivering and wracked with pain and nightmares; she and Alphonse were the only witnesses to his suffering.

#15 - Flexible

He knew she didn't want to marry a man shorter than she was, but he always hoped that she might change her mind someday.

#16 - Flying

When he told her she was beautiful, he was high as a kite on morphine after his automail surgery, and claimed he didn't remember a thing when he came out of it.

#17 - Food

It always amazed her that he could eat as much as he did and never gain an ounce, while she had to count every calorie if she wanted to keep her figure.

#18 - Foot

When his foot literally broke off at the ankle as he started to run off after Alphonse, she had to smile; two years later, he was still breaking his automail.

#19 - Grave

If she had gone to them, joined them at their mother's grave after the funeral, she liked to think that maybe things would have turned out diffferently.

#20 - Green

When Sciezka saw how the two of them were together, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy.

#21 - Head

When the ship turned into that ridiculous caricature of his face - complete with antenna - she wasn't sure whether to laugh at his audacity or cry with relief, although there wasn't time to do either.

#22 - Hollow

The night an empty suit of armor that spoke with Alphonse's voice showed up clutching him, unconscious and bleeding, in its arms, was one of the worst nights of her life.

#23 - Honor

Mustang knew there was no honor in using children to obtain his goals; he just hoped that the boy and his family could someday forgive him for it.

#24 - Hope

Every time they left, she would always pray to whatever gods watched over her and them that they would return to her in one piece.

#25 - Light

There was a lot of his father there in his personality, and he was always afraid that he would do to her what Hohenheim did to his mother.

#26 - Lost

When he got back to the dorm that night, he had a bad case of the shakes; if she'd pulled the trigger and killed Scar, he knew he'd have lost her for sure.

#27 - Metal

Automail had been a running motif in her life because her grandmother worked with it all the time; she had never dreamed it would be part of his.

#28 - New

If he had been able to tear himself away from his books and his alchemy long enough to notice she was actually female, it might have put an entirely new spin on their relationship.

#29 - Old

Winry had always hoped that they would have what their parents hadn't - to get married, have kids, and grow old and die together - but somehow she knew that was never meant to be.

#30 - Peace

Pinako watched as the the two brothers brawled in the yard and her granddaughter yelled at them for fighting with her automail, and just shook her head; life with those three might not have been peaceful, but it certainly was interesting.

#31 - Poison

They'd administered the antidote and stablized his conditon by the time Colonel Mustang and Lieutenant Hawkeye arrived, so she let herself relax enough to laugh when the doctor adressed them as Mr. and Mrs. Elric...and they actually responded.

#32 - Pretty

She had always been oblivious to her looks, but he had always thought she was the prettiest girl he knew.

#33 - Rain

He'd been so deep in thought he hadn't noticed the rain until it stopped falling on him; she'd been holding the umbrella over the both of them for the past five minutes.

#34 - Regret

He would always regret having not brought her with him to this new world, but he'd at least gotten to see her one last time before the Gate closed forever.

#35 - Roses

He never transmuted flowers for her; the first time he presented her with a bouquet of pink roses, he made a point of telling her, "They're real."

#36 - Secret

That the two of them were head over heels for each other was one of the best-kept non-secrets in Resembool; they were the only two in the village who didn't know.

#37 - Snakes

Putting the snakes in the pockets of her coveralls had seemed like a good prank at the time, but the joke turned out to be on him; she fussed over them, petted them, and put them back in the garden, then yelled at him for abusing the poor things.

#38 - Snow

The Elric-Rockbell snowball fights had been epic battles ever since they were children; they escalated to the point of legendary once the two brothers started studying alchemy and she learned the basics of automail construction.

#39 - Solid

"Don't ask," was all he would say when she asked how his automail had become a solid, vaguely arm-shaped lump of iron.

#40 - Spring

He cackled as she went down on her hands and knees looking for the spring that had ricocheted across the room from the depths of his automail.

#41 - Stable

His advice had given her an insight into her best friend and his brother that she hadn't had before, but she had to wonder if Mr. Hughes was speaking from first-hand experience.

#42 - Strange

She stared for a long moment at the abstract sculpture that had once been his arm before she asked the question, "What the hell did you do to my automail this time?"

#43 - Summer

The end of their childhood came on a summer night when it wouldn't stop raining; after that, all three of them had had to grow up in a very short time.

#44 - Taboo

Human transmutation was a violation of Amestrian law and the laws of nature; she didn't fully understand why until the night her friends tried to bring their mother back from the dead.

#45 - Ugly

His search had taken a lot of ugly turns in a very short time, but the worst came when the homonculi had the gall to threaten her.

#46 - War

When the soldiers came to talk to them, the lieutenant colonel made joining the army sound so reasonable, but she knew that he would eventually lead her two best friends down the same road that had killed her parents.

#47 - Water

Alphonse always went to sit by the river when he was in a funk, but she always looked for him in a tree or on a roof when he was brooding.

#48 - Welcome

He always knew that no matter what happened, she and her grandmother would always be there to welcome them home.

#49 - Winter

Her name came from the coldest season of the year, but she always reminded him of the summer.

#50 - Wood

Even as she watched them start to throw dirt on the small oak casket, she refused to believe that he was dead.


	4. Hohenheim and Trisha Elric

Sorry it took so long with this. My modem got fried in a storm, and I haven't been able to get online for a while.

I still do not own Fullmetal Alchemist or any of the associated characters and situations. I'm not Hiromu Arakawa, people.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, I give you my next pairing, and, oddly enough, they're really only one of the two canon couples I'm dealing with here.

Reviews and comments are, of course, appreciated, and flames will be directed to the appropriate alchemists.

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Hohenheim and Trisha Elric

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#01 – Motion

He was going through the motions of being the good father and loving husband, but she knew something was seriously wrong, even though he wouldn't tell her what.

#02 – Cool

He was usually so calm and collected no matter what happened, but when her water broke and labor started, he went into a panic.

#03 – Young

He was too old for her, she knew that, but he was so charming that she couldn't help but fall for him.

#04 – Last

He'd hoped that this time, his body would last for more than a few short years, but when the signs of decay showed up, he had no choice but to leave.

#05 – Wrong

Why was it that Edward and Alphonse were always _his_ children when they did something wrong?

#06 – Gentle

Noa's impression of Edward's father, even under the shading of years of anger, was of a soft-spoken man who never raised his hand or voice to his wife or children, but though she understood his reasons, she still thought what he did was inexcusable.

#07 – One

When she came down the stairs with the baby in her arms, he saw not a homonculous, but the one woman he'd loved in all his long lifetime, and it was no wonder he was struck speechless.

#08 – Thousand

He could have lived for a milennium, but could never have found someone he loved as dearly as he did her.

#09 – King

He was a king among alchemists, but she and their sons loved him for who, rather than what, he was.

#10 – Learn

She had always hoped that Edward and Alphonse would become alchemists and follow in their father's footsteps someday; he had always prayed that they wouldn't.

#11 – Blur

The centuries had passed so solowly for him, but the few short years he'd spent with her passed so slowly he almost didn't notice.

#12 – Wait

When he left, he told her he didn't know how long he'd be gone; she promised to wait for him until he returned.

#13 – Change

"Edward, I'd like you to meet your little brother Alphonse," he said as he boosted the toddler up to see the baby in his mother's arms.

#14 – Command

When they took their vows, he asked the minister not to use the word "obey;" he would never ask her to make a promise she wouldn't necessarily be able to keep.

#15 – Hold

What she missed most about him was the way he would hold her close at night.

#16 – Need

Neither Winry nor Alphonse ever told Edward that during the worst of his fevers after he lost his limbs, he called out for both his mother and father.

#17 – Vision

Edward and Alphonse learned to read his alchemy books at a very young age, and he was willing to bet every sen he had in the bank that at least one of them would end up needing glasses.

#18 – Attention

His attention to detail permeated every aspect of his life – a fact for which she was always grateful.

#19 – Soul

There was nothing left of Alphonse except a soul bound to the suit of armor that had once been in his workshop, but he would have known his youngest son anywhere.

#20 – Picture

The photographs on Pinako's wall told the story of the diminishment of their little family; he walked out, she died, and finally, not even the boys were left.

#21 – Fool

Winry privately thought her friends' mother was something of a fool waiting all those years for him to return; as she grew up, though, she came to understand why she had done what she did.

#22 – Mad

He knew it was crazy to try to build a life with her, but it didn't stop him from trying.

#23 – Child

"We'll call him Edward," he said, cradling his newborn son in his arms for the first time.

#24 – Now

Sloth had shadows of memories of having loved and been loved by him, but now, he was just one more human to be disposed of.

#25 – Shadow

Alphonse only remembered him as a tall dark shape with a gentle voice; everything else he knew, his mother and brother had told him.

#26 – Goodbye

Edward and Alphonse had already buried their mother, but somehow, losing him was worse; she had gotten sick and died, but he was murdered right in front of Ed's eyes.

#27 – Hide

The first signs of decay appeared on his shoulder; he knew he could hide them for a while, but if his wife and children saw them, they would start asking questions he didn't want to answer.

#28 – Fortune

He left behind a small fortune for her and the boys, but she never touched it; she knew they'd need it when she was gone.

#29 – Safe

As brilliant as Edward was, he couldn't understand the paradox of a man that would abandon his family, then turn around and sacrifice his own life to protect two worlds.

#30 – Ghost

As they grew older, Alphonse came to resemble him more and more, until it seemed to Edward that he was looking at their father's ghost.

#31 – Book

She was sure of the change in her boys' relationship when she saw the two of them looking at a book together instead of fighting, and blessed her husband for having spoken to Edward about his brother.

#32 – Eye

All three of his sons strongly resembled their father, but only Envy and Edward had inherited his eyes.

#33 – Never

Though he never had and never would meet her, Roy Mustang had to wonder what kind of woman their mother had been, to produce two such extraordinary sons.

#34 – Sing

Edward remembered that his mother had sung all the time before his father left; after he'd gone, she never sang unless he or Alphonse asked her to.

#35 – Sudden

Her illness had not come on as suddenly as she'd led her boys to think; even if he'd been there, all he'd have been able to do was mourn her.

#36 – Stop

Edward had stopped hating his father once he learned the truth, but the two years he had before the old man died weren't nearly long enough to make up for lost time.

#37 – Time

There were pictures of him in Pinako's picture albums; she'd never noticed it before, but in the fifty years since those were taken, he hadn't changed a bit.

#38 – Wash

The first time he gave the baby a bath, he and Edward, the entire bathroom, and most of the hall ended up soaked.

#39 – Torn

"I've never met a man who knew how to sew," she said as she watched him mend the tears in the lining of his jacket.

#40 – History

Alphonse didn't think Edward had ever taken time to mourn their mother or the loss of their home; it was like he was trying to ignore everything that had happened to them before they tried human transmutation.

#41 – Power

She knew that Edward would never forgive his father for leaving them, but the force of his anger scared her sometimes.

#42 – Bother

He knew that Dante and her twisted offspring were still lurking out there; the possibility that she might come after his wife and children someday scared him more than he was willing to admit.

#43 – God

Whenever he left to do research, she always prayed to whatever gods watched over alchemists that he would come home safe.

#44 – Wall

She tried to explain to the boys that their father still loved them, but getting through to Edward was like talking to a brick wall.

#45 – Naked

"Edward Elric, you get back here this instant!" she yelled as the toddler ran out of the bathroom without a stitch of clothes on.

#46 – Drive

Maes Hughes had been the one to explain to Ed about girls, and Roy Mustang had taught him how to drive a car; his mother's husband may have been the one to sire him, but he hadn't been there when it really mattered until almost the end.

#47 – Harm

If he had known what kind of harm his leaving would do to her and their boys, he might have reconsidered his plan.

#48 – Precious

The sight of her husband and sons curled up asleep on the sofa together was just too cute for words; she couldn't resist taking a picture.

#49 – Hunger

Edward had been crying for two hours despite everything he'd tried to calm him down, and he was afraid he'd broken the baby; it was a relief to find out Edward was just hungry.

#50 – Believe

He had believed in alchemy and its underlying principles for the entire four hundred-plus years he'd been alive, but she and their boys gave him something to live for he'd never thought could be out there.


	5. Havoc and Lust

Once again, I'm sorry this took so long in the posting. Hurricane Ike, the first hurricane ever to hit Ohio that I know of, swept through and knocked out our power for a week. It's taken me the better part of a month to get used to writing on a computer again.

As always, I am still not Hiromu Arakawa, and I still do not own Fullmetal Alchemist or any of the characters or situations associated with it.

This couple is purely manga-based, and only had two scenes and a comic strip in the back of Volume 17 devoted to them (so far). Reviews are welcome, and, once again, all flames will be directed to the appropriate alchemist. If you're good and tell me what you think, I'll even do a bonus chapter.

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Jean Havoc and Lust

#

#01 – Ring

The ring he'd been planning to give her had been living in the bottom of his coat pocket for weeks the day she nearly killed him; he'd been planning to ask her to marry him.

#02 – Hero

She always liked his stories; he was no hero, but he always made her laugh.

#03 – Memory

Being with him triggered memories of her past life, of having truly loved and been loved before, only to have lost that love to illness and death.

#04 – Box

Envy found the black velvet jewelry box that the lieutenant had dropped in the fight and kept it, even though the significance escaped him.

#05 – Run

Before he realized she actually liked his stories, he was afraid he was boring her silly; she probably had better things to do with her time than listen to a down-at-heels army lieutenant let his mouth run.

#06 – Hurricane

His story of the inland hurricane that had hit in the East had to be a tall tale; if he was telling the truth, the wind had been strong enough to uproot trees, bring down power lines, and nearly carry away a miniature alchemist with a mouth like an open sewer.

#07 – Wings

When Colonel Mustang heard that his second lieutenant had been seen around town with a beautiful brunette, his first instinct was to start looking for pig-bird hybrids in the trees.

#08 – Cold

She didn't feel the cold the way humans did, so she was more surprised than grateful when he took his jacket off and draped it around her shoulders to protect her from the chill of the night air.

#09 – Red

Black was her signature color, but he always thought that she would look good in red

#10 – Drink

The relationship had started casually enough when he met a pretty girl at a cafe and offered to buy her a drink; if he'd known what would happen, he might have had second thoughts.

#11 – Midnight

He hadn't noticed how long they'd talked until he noticed the bartender wiping down the bar and putting chairs up on the tables; he'd never stayed up until the wee hours of the morning just trading stories with someone before, and neither had she.

#12 – Temptation

When he asked about her parents and if she had brothers or sisters, she was more than tempted to take him to meet the other homonculi, but instead told him that she was an oprhan, and had no living family.

#13 – View

His shock at seeing the ouroborous tattoo on her left breast was genuine, and Roy was amazed that his subordinate had never seen her naked before.

#14 – Music

His story about the girl who lifted pianos as a hobby rather than playing them was hilarious; she laughed, but at the same time, she couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

#15 – Silk

He knew she was a lady of quality when he first set eyes on her; the price of the silk her dress was made of would have bought his groceries for a month.

#16 – Cover

She always wore high-necked dresses when she went to see him; they hid her mark, and she didn't want him to know what she was.

#17 – Promise

When his mother realized that he was truly serious about this new girl he was seeing, she made him promse to bring her home with him the next time he was on leave.

#18 – Dream

What he really wanted was the same thing his parents had, and Lt. Colonel Hughes had had – an adoring wife and children to come home to.

#19 – Candle

Sciezka watched with envy as he left headquarters to meet the mystery woman he'd been seeing; she sounded like a heroine in a cheesy romance novel, and she knew there was no way she could ever hold a candle to her.

#20 – Talent

Envy had watched her pull the wool over dozens of people's eyes since she'd joined them; only this time, he had to wonder if she wasn't fooling herself this time, too.

#21 – Silence

He knew she was the one when even the silences between them were comfortable.

#22 – Journey

When he looked into her eyes for the first time, the long trip from Eastern to Central suddenly seemed worth it.

#23 – Fire

Hawkeye was grateful that he'd lost consciousness after the colonel seared his wounds closed; he didn't need to witness his commanding officer killing the woman he loved over and over again until she stayed dead.

#24 – Strength

When she first chose to go after him, she'd figured that he would cave to her wishes like a house of cards, but he had a strength of personality that she hadn't expected.

#25 – Mask

She hoped that after they found the Philosopher's Stone, she could face him as a human woman, rather than as a homonculous playing dress-up.

#26 – Ice

He took her ice-skating the first winter he was in Central; his arms around her as she wobbled around the ring for the first time was well worth the bruises she'd have in the morning.

#27 – Fall

She'd planned on using him to get information about the Elric brothers and Mustang and his men; she hadn't planned on falling for him.

#28 – Forgotten

He reminded her of someone she had known a long time ago, in another time and place, but for the life of her she had no idea who it could have been.

#29 – Dance

They went dancing on their second date; he didn't know a waltz from a foxtrot and stepped on her feet several times in the course of the evening, but they both still had fun.

#30 – Body

She was everything he wanted in a girl – smart, cute, funny, a good personality, and a body that just wouldn't quit.

#31 – Sacred

The idea of a home and family seemed almost sacred to him at times; she never had the heart to tell him that she could never bear a child.

#32 – Farewells

Stabbing him in the gut was a lousy way for her to tell him goodbye; he preferred it when she kissed him.

#33 – World

He would have given her the world if she had asked for it, and if she'd been human, she'd have accepted.

#34 – Formal

She always thought it was cute the way he would stand up when she arrived, or always bring her fresh flowers; it was the old-fashioned, formal touches that made their relationship.

#35 – Fever

In the worst of his fever, after he'd been rushed to the hospital, he was still calling out for her; Hawkeye had no idea how he would cope once he was back in his right mind.

#36 – Laugh

He always played up the humor when he told her about the people he worked with; he loved to hear her laugh.

#37 – Lies

She'd been trying to figure out how to break it off with him for a while now; she was tired of lying to him, but didn't think he could handle the truth.

#38 – Forever

He had hoped to spend the rest of his life with her; instead he was going to spend it in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down and living on a government pension.

#39 – Overwhelmed

The first time he said he loved her, she didn't know what to think; usually, the only time a man ever said that to her was when he was in the throes of passion, not having lunch with her at an outdoor cafe.

#40 – Whisper

They weren't really rumors – just whispers, really – of inhuman monsters lurking in the background and killing people who got too close to finding out what they were, but when he warned her to be careful of them, she laughed and said she had nothing to worry about.

#41 – Wait

Gluttony knew that her interest in the human couldn't last forever; he couldn't wait much longer for her to let him eat him.

#42 – Talk

Unlike her previous relationships, long talks about about their hopes and dreams for the future outweighed the physical aspects; oddly, though, she really didn't mind...much.

#43 – Search

The quest for the Philosopher's Stone had indirectly brought them together; she'd hoped it would let them stay together, too.

#44 – Hope

The one thing he really hoped for in their relationship was that she would not let herself be stolen away from him by Colonel Mustang.

#45 – Eclipse

Colonel Mustang always bragged about the beautiful women he went out with, but in his eyes, she eclipsed and surpassed every one of them, including the lovely but lethal Lieutenant Hawkeye.

#46 – Gravity

She remembers, barely, a white-haired man making jokes about gravity catching up with her eventually, but in the time she'd known him, he never made a comment like that in her presence.

#47 – Highway

Whenever she said she had to travel, he always worried about her; there were a hundred things, none of them good, that could have happened to a single woman on the road by herself.

#48 – Unknown

As he remembered more and more of their conversations, he realized that she'd never told him anything about herself; she'd let him make assumptions and had never bothered to correct them.

#49 – Lock

Even after he'd been married for ten years, he'd never told his wife about her; he'd kept that set of memories locked away in the back of his mind for all that time, and rarely touched them if he didn't have to.

#50 – Breathe

The first time she kissed him, he nearly forgot how to breathe; fortunately, instinct and common sense took over and saved him any potential embarassment.


	6. Maes and Gracia, Munich 1923

And here we are, at long last. This is the bonus chapter I promised you so long ago. Believe it or not, this one gave me the hardest time. Since it's set in something close to our own timeline, it's going to be a bit grimmer than the others

And once again, I'm still not Hiromu Arakawa, a nd all I own of Fullmetal Alchemist is the manga and the DVDs of the series and movie.

Let me know what you think.

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Maes and Gracia – Munich, 1923

#

#01 – Walking

He'd been walking the same beat for three years and had never noticed the florist's shop on the corner until the day he saw her in the window.

#02 – Waltz

He had never thought much of American music, but their first dance together had been to the song _Stardust_; he was starting to notice that his opinions of a lot of things he'd previously dismissed were starting to change.

#03 – Wishes

The shop and the building had belonged to her parents and they had left both of them to her when they died; it had been her mother's wish that she keep the shop going, though she herself had wanted to become a nurse.

#04 – Wonder

Edward Elric kept dropping hints that the two of them belonged together; she wondered what there was about the man that would make Edward think that.

#05 – Worry

There were times she longed for the days when she didn't have to worry about her loved ones putting their lives on the line for total strangers, but those days were becoming few and far between.

#06 – Whimsy

He came across as just so serious and so focused on his work that she never would have believed that there was a free spirit lurking anywhere underneath it all.

#07 – Waste/Wasteland

She'd noticed him watching her through the window and thought that he wasn't bad looking, but it just seemed such a waste that a man like that would associate with such trash.

#08 – Whiskey and rum

The first time they really met was on a night when he dragged home an extremely drunk Edward Elric, half-giggling, half-crying, and singing an obscene ditty about a one-armed alchemist and a girl with a chainsaw.

#09 – War

When England and France declared war on Germany, they held each other close and prayed it would be over soon, for the sakes of those they left behind, if nothing else.

#10 – Weddings

Their wedding, when they finally did marry, was a hurried affair at best; he was leaving Germany for good, and the only way she could come with him was as his wife.

#11 – Birthday

A bouquet of flowers and a card were waiting for her when she got back from lunch; she hadn't even realized he knew when her birthday was.

#12 – Blessing

He would always regret having joined the Nazis, even briefly, but the blessings he'd gained after he left – his wife, children, and grandchildren – far outweighed the advantages he'd have had if he'd stayed.

#13 – Bias

His jaw dropped when he saw her in the slinky black bias-cut dress she'd just finished making week before, and she knew she had him right where she wanted him.

#14 – Burning

As London burned around them, he remembered Edward talking about an alchemist he'd known who could start fires with a snap of his fingers, and wondered if there was any truth to his stories; on the other side of the Gate, Roy Mustang sneezed.

#15 – Breathing

The Elric brothers were the ones who found him and brought him to her place after the fight; he'd been beaten badly enough that she'd had to look twice to make sure he was still breathing.

#16 – Breaking

She knew that he had truly turned his back on the Nazis when he asked her if she wanted to go to Midnight Mass at the cathedral with him on Christmas Eve.

#17 – Belief

What he'd seen during the invasion of Shamballa and afterwards was enough to shake in faith in the Nazi party forever; he never regretted tearing the armband off and walking away.

#18 – Balloon

Edward showed up six months later struggling with a massive bunch of balloons that he claimed were from a secret admirer; two pieces of apple pie, a cup of coffee, and a long talk later, she knew exactly who had sent them.

#19 – Balcony

When he saw the gypsy girl leaning over the second floor balcony, he knew she had let herself in for trouble, but she wouldn't listen when he tried to warn her.

#20 – Bane

An honest cop was the bane of a corrupt police department, and he learned to his cost that he was no exception.

#21 – Quiet

It didn't take him long after the Beer Hall Putsch to realize that there was a version of himself in Shamballa, but when he asked Edward and Alphonse what had happened to him, neither would answer.

#22 – Quirks

Edward had never expected to see either of them again, but was still thrown for a nasty loop when he met their counterparts in Munich; she was much the same as she had been back home, but he had none of the quirks Edward had always associated with him.

#23 – Question

His proposal of marriage hadn't been what she'd hoped it would be, but their marriage was a long and happy one, and they were together until the day they died.

#24 – Quarrel

When Edward had known them in Amestris, he had never heard of the two of them arguing; to see them at odds with each other here was as unsettling as the dim memories he had of the rare fights his own parents had.

#25 – Quitting

As the Nazis' influence worked its way deeper into the department, more and more of his fellow officers joined up; the day he finally handed in his badge and gun, he knew his next step would be to flee the country.

#26 – Jump

Watching the Elric brothers brawl was a new experience for both of them; neither one had ever seen someone leap half a story into the air they way those boys could.

#27 – Jester

After he stopped associating with those people from the beer hall, she found there was a clownish side to his personality that she'd never seen before; she found herself liking it – and him – more and more.

#28 – Jousting

Verbal jousting had been part of their relationship since they'd first met, but she could never quite pin down the point where it turned into flirtation.

#29 – Jewel

The necklace she wore at their wedding was a single sapphire on a chain; it had belonged to her mother and her grandmother before her, and would someday belong to their daughter.

#30 – Just

Edward had seen what the two of them had had back home; if there were any justice in the universe, he hoped they would have that here, too.

#31 – Smirk

When she told Edward and Alphonse that she had a date with him that night, both brothers smirked, and she was reasonably sure some money changed hands later on.

#32 – Sorrow

When a drunken Edward Elric burst into tears and started apologizing to him for having gotten him killed, he simply assumed it was the alcohol talking; years later, the boy's brother, Alphonse, told him the whole truth.

#33 – Stupidity

Male stupidity, it occurred to her, was the root cause of ninety-five percent of the world's problems; it was the only reason she could come up with that would explain why he'd decided to take on that gang of brown-shirts by himself.

#34 – Seranade

One of his friends had suggested that he try seranading her one night, but he dismissed that idea almost immediately; he couldn't sing a note, and he knew it.

#35 – Sarcasm

She had always had a sharp tongue, but he had never known that until a few days before the uprising, when she turned it on him.

#36 – Sordid

When the rumors of death camps started to leak out of Germany, she was ready to dismiss them as just that, but he had seen what Hitler's people were capable of and knew that stories were most likely true.

#37 – Soliloquy

He had been waxing eloquent for the past hour about paragon of loveliness that was the girl in the florist's shop, but stammered to a halt when Edward Elric, her newest tenant, suggested he ask her out.

#38 – Sojourn

Edward and Alphonse had come home to Munich long enough to see them married; when they saw them again two years later, they had emigrated to England, and she was expecting their first child.

#39 – Share

He never understood why it was that she would give more than her fair share to help the people who needed it, while others wouldn't raise a hand.

#40 – Solitary

As she got to know him, she found that solitude was not part of his nature; he didn't like to be alone if he could help it.

#41 – Nowhere

The longer he thought about leaving, the more and more he became convinced that he was not going to go anywhere if she didn't go with him.

#42 – Neutral

Officially, the police were supposed to be politically neutral, but as time passed and things started to get bad, he saw more of his fellow officers go on the take, and still more of them embrace the Nazis' philosophies; he knew a time would come when he would have to rejoin them or flee.

#43 – Nuance

He wasn't one to wear his heart on his sleeve, but once she knew what to look for, she could read him like a book.

#44 – Near

He had been on the front during the Great War, and had been an active participant in the November uprising; considering all he'd done, he was amazed she was willing to come anywhere near him.

#45 – Natural

Civil servants made very little money, so it only made sense to his commanding officer that his men would supplement their income with a little judicious bribery here and there; when he stopped doing that, his captain didn't understand why.

#46 – Horizon

When they left Germany, they had nothing but each other and what little they could carry, but the future facing them in England was far better than anything they'd have had under the Nazis.

#47 – Valiant

He didn't know if the girl he'd been protecting had gotten away, his glasses were lying smashed somewhere in the street, and he felt like he'd just gone ten rounds with Joe Louis, but it was all worth it; in her eyes, he was a hero.

#48 – Virtuous

Edward had fallen out of his chair laughing when he met the priest who had married them; the man's counterpart in Shamballa was apparently the mysterious Colonel Mustang.

#49 – Victory

There was less reason to celebrate the end of the war in the Far East; the news of the nuclear bomb being dropped, and the picture of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima left them both dizzy with horror at the scope of the death and destruction.

#50 – Defeat

News of the Nazis' defeat came on their tenth wedding anniversary; they and most of their friends stayed up most of the night celebrating.


End file.
